Hurried Reflections
by yellow and pink
Summary: Emmeline deals with a whisper of emotion the only way she knows how. Rushed Benjy/Emmeline. For HPFC challenges. K for an interjection of lustlike rawness.


A/N: For TimeChasm's Random Quotes Challenge and musefan929's Fifty Photos Challenge on HPFC. I expanded it a bit to make it 2% more complete because I am irresponsible. bit. ly/ 1ittwXz (delete the spaces) is the semi-inspiration. Enjoy.

* * *

We only walk in the rain.

It's your last year, last month, last week, and it's mine as well. But different. Different was always the case between us. Just like how you seem ten times wetter when your robes practically fall off your shoulders. You've thinned out. So have I.

So naturally we gravitate to the one solace we share, the fraying knots in the straw of our toy brooms. That's all that our brooms are, knots.

The ground is mushy under our feet. I stop walking once you've gained precisely 0.47 meters on me and slip my shoes off. You feel uncomfortable having to see me barefoot. So you change the subject with a flick of your wand.

"We won the Quidditch Cup."

"I know. I was there."

"Yeah. I think that's well good, right?"

I don't really know what to say. We walk in the rain.

You joke about it being two months late for showers. June sounds as beautiful as it must taste in your mouth. As _it_ must taste in your tongue. That's how it always goes in my mind, and it always runs in my mind like the idea of tomorrow, it never hits me.

You do, though. Hit me. I can feel the lingering tenderness in my temples with at least a ten-minute head-start before impact. You're only going to hit me once, though, the side closest to you. The doubled pain is my fault. I accidentally fall against the trunk of a tree and strike the mirror image of that spot. It always has to be a pair. Of course, you apologise, you tell me you get ahead of yourself, I tell you I do too. You insist I don't. I have to agree.

You ask me what I'm thinking about. I'm not thinking about anything worthwhile. I tell you I'm thinking about life and flowers and graduation and Grandmum's biscuits and all the splinters on my Comet that I can count on four hands. I'm thinking about how I might rather be alone now. I tell you I almost forgot about the rain until it hit that soft spot on my neck. I laugh.

Then I wait. I know I'm going to wait. I always do.

You snap me out of my thoughts with a hard kiss, just the way I like it.

You snap me out of my thoughts with an extra whack to the back. You kick the tree trunk, give it a good chiding for hitting me, then you rush to rub my back again. I'm silent, and this somehow reminds you of a Wordsworth quote.

"They flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude." I tend to forget compliments, I tell you. It's one of the best things I've thought of yet.

"What are they?"

"Daffodils," you say.

"What are daffodils?"

"Flowers. Beautiful flowers. You lot don't have them around you, then-_no_, you do have them, I've seen them in Herbology!" I crack a grin. "You cheeky woman!"

You bend down. I lower my eyes, pushing you away and regretting it momentarily, as I tend to do.

You switch the subject. We walk in the rain.

You ask me to smell the wet stone, and I say it smells more like wet dog. I wait three seconds and then turn around, expect to find a crinkled dog nose to laugh at in the centre of your face. Your beautiful face. There isn't one. It's my turn to swap the subject.

"What sort of colour is that?"

"It's a dry one, Em. It's been raining all day and that stone's still dry. It's right in the middle of the rain."

"Benjy, wasn't that the stone you pointed to when we were out earlier?"

"Yeah, it is, I s'pose. We've walked around here three times already. Let's move on. Hogsmeade, or something. We've still got a ripe two hours to kill." And that's the end of it. We walk in the rain.

* * *

Fluctuation between hard observations and raw lust, that's a dangerous combination. You tend to forget things. For example, you tend to forget the pair of brooms on a country road. You tend not to notice the rain has been deliberately avoiding your back, though that's not as much of a surprise. It may well should have happened already, because you feel so lonely. They do say fluctuations tend to proffer the most provoking discoveries, don't they? Nobody says that. And now I've gone and flustered myself.

It always ends up quick in the end.

You always branch off, and I'm left.

I remember the wrong things, I forget to be simple, I forget you.

That inward eye of solitude doesn't looks so favorably upon either of us now.

We only walk in the rain.


End file.
